Thursday, November 08, 2012

Sheldon sees Red!

but gambing billionaire is just a lousy loser!

SHELDON ADELSON'S Hebrew freesheet, Yisroel Hayom, or as Israeli's call it, "the Bibiton", doing its best to spread gloom and despondency. Maybe the gambling king would have done better to spread his bets.

This is the free Israeli daily newspaper Yisrael Hayom, or Israel Today, Israeli ecept it is owned and published by Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who right now is not a happy man. He blew a small fortune - some reports estimate $100 million, which is small for Sheldon, admittedly - backing Mitt Romney and other Republicans standing for election, and five out of his six horses did not come in.

Yisrael Hayom, founded in 2008, is losing money too, even though it has a big circulation, being free. The newspaper is nicknamed the "Bibiton", "iton" meaning newspaper, and this one known for its staunch support to Israeli premier Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. Netanyahu had also bet on Obama to lose this time, hoping a Right-wing Republican would reward him with support for Israel's settlement expansion and plans for war on Iran. Now despite his Likud party merging with Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitanu to reinforce his hand, opponents say "Bibi" will pay for his misplaced confidence.

Some were puzzled today over the Bibiton's attempt to damn Obama and his policies by denouncing them as "Socialist". Maybe the paper's propaganda was on safer ground when it tried to smear the US president by imaginary association with some "Israel-hating terrorist".

The "socialism" tag is equally untrue, and even lesss likely to be effective. Despite its right-wing government and brutal expansionist policies, Israel is not yet absorbed in the kind of "American Dream" individualism (with hand outs for the super Rich) of wealthy Republicans. With so many Israelis, and not just Arab citizens, on the poverty line, it can't afford it.

Besides, oldsters can still remember when the state's founding fathers in the Labour Party and what is now Meretz used to call themselves socialists. Russian immigrants looking for work admit not everything was bad about the old Soviet Union. Young people who have taken part in tent protests in the last two years demanding social justice and social housing are less likely to be frightened by the other 'S' word. So far as they are still inclined to ape all things American they might even take the Yisroel Hayom headline as encouragement!

Running an Israeli paper from Vegas, Adelson may have misjudged his readers as much as he misrepresents the policies of the US president. But what is even more bemusing, as well as amusing, is that when the gambling man complains that his fellow Americans have voted for "socialism", his more immediate fear is that the US authorities want to know too much about his business activities in what the American papers always used to refer to as "Red China"!